At the end of our philosophy sessions together this year, I asked the 5th grade students with whom I’d been working what questions they’d like to keep talking about. I loved their questions. Here are some of them:
Why are we here?
Why am I me?
Why do we have philosophy?
What is art?
How do we know life isn’t just a dream?
What are emotions?
How do we know we have minds?
Why do we ask questions?
What is the imagination? Is the imagination memory?
What started everything? What is the beginning?
What is time?
How do we know other people see what we see and hear what we hear?
Jana Mohr Lone is the director and founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, an academic research center dedicated to research and practice in philosophy for children and philosophy of childhood, and she is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Jana is the author of Seen and Not Heard (2021) and The Philosophical Child (2012). She co-authored the textbook Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (2016) and co-edited the collection of essays Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People (2012). Since 1995 she has taught philosophy in classrooms from preschool to college and beyond. A frequent writer and speaker about precollege philosophy, Jana is the founding president of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People. Follow her on Twitter: @JanaMohrLone